THE 24TH OVERTURE WORKSHOP ON VDM, FORMAL METHODS, & AI

The 24th Overture Workshop will be held on the 18th or 19th May 2026 co-located with FM 2026, hosted by National Institute of Informatics (NII).

Location: NII, Tokyo, Japan and online

Online: Details TBC

Timing and Important Dates

Note: ** Workshop planned for 14:00-19:00 JST / 07:00-12:00 CET / 06:00-11:00 GMT ** to balance time zone differences between Japan and Europe.

• Monday 2nd March 2026: Submission of papers

• Monday 6th April 2026: Notification to authors

• Monday 4th May 2026: Final version of papers due

• 18th or 19th May 2026: Workshop

CALL FOR PAPERS

This will be latest in a series of workshops around the Vienna Development Method (VDM), the open-source project Overture, and related tools and formalisms.

Although VDM is one of the oldest formal methods to have enjoyed a level of industry use, it maintains a lively research community. At the core is VDMJ, the main open-source tool support for VDM. Recent developments include integration with VSCode through a plug-in, in addition to the more mature Eclipse-based Overture tool. The tools provide a basis for static analysis, interpretation, test generation and execution support, theorem proving and model checking. Further developments around the Overture technologies include a Quick Check tool for finding counter examples, extensions to support co-simulation (INTO-CPS) and integration as part of Digital Twin as a Service (DTaaS), and the live IDE ViennaTalk developed in Japan. Overture workshops often attract Japanese submissions and attendees.

The growth of this community has greatly been assisted by the Overture workshop series, and there is a long tradition of co-location with the FM symposia (11 between 2005 and 2024) and tutorials at FM’14 and FM’21. Proceedings of previous workshops may be obtained from the Overture website.

Previous workshops have been invaluable in encouraging both new and established members of the community in their work, and helping to determine priorities and future directions. Proceedings of former workshops are available at https://www.overturetool.org/.

Call

The workshop provides a forum for discussing and advancing the state of the art in formal modelling and analysis using VDM and its family of associated formalisms. We strongly welcome contributions addressing the development of tools for VDM, developments in foundations, and reports on practical experience. The scope of the workshop includes, but is not restricted to:

The scope of the workshop includes, but is not restricted to:

• Reports on applications of VDM technology and reports of industrial use.
• Papers describing requirements, designs, implementations, and case studies of support tools for VDM.
• Papers on the foundations and methodology associated with VDM and its extensions.
• Papers combining VDM with other notations and tools.
• Position papers on VDM and its promotion in industry practice.
• Papers on related tools including INTO-CPS, ViennaTalk, and VSCode.
• Papers relating more widely to AI/LLMs and application to VDM and related formalisms.

Submission

For submitted papers, we welcome submissions in the following formats:

• Extended Abstracts: Short-form summaries (max. 2000 words) of the content of presentations on work that is at an early stage and either addresses an open issue or reports experience within the workshop scope.
• Tool Reports: Shorter papers focusing on initial results in developing and applying the tools and formalisms, with a view to receiving community feedback ahead of a full paper (to a future workshop or other venue). Tool reports should not exceed 8 pages LNCS and should include a link to (e.g. GitHub), or instructions for, accessing the tool / model being reported on.
• Full Papers: Longer papers reporting more mature results. Full papers should not exceed 15 pages LNCS.

Members of the programme committee will anonymously referee submissions, with a view to providing constructive feedback to allow for inclusive submissions. Proceedings will be published as a Technical Report and will be available online, along with presentations at the Overture website. If the venue permits it, we also aim to record and uploads parts of the sessions for those unable to attend.

Submission link: TBC

Organising

Chairs

• Tomohiro ODA, Softare Research Associates, Inc., Japan (tomohiro@sra.co.jp)
• Ken PIERCE, Newcastle University, United Kingdom (ken.pierce@newcastle.ac.uk)

Program Committee (Draft)

• Shaukat ALI, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
• Victor BANDUR, McMaster University, Canada
• Stylianos BASAGGIANNIS, International Hellenic University, Greece
• Aaron John BUHAGIAR, ScubaTX, UK
• John FITZGERALD, Newcastle University, UK
• Leo FREITAS, Newcastle University, UK
• Peter Gorm LARSEN, Aarhus University, Denmark
• Paolo MASCI, Universidade do Minho, Portugal
• José Nuno OLIVEIRA, Minho University, Portugal
• Nico PLAT, Thanos, The Netherlands

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to Ken (kenneth.pierce@newcastle.ac.uk) and Tomo (tomohiro@sra.co.jp)

Sponsor

TBA